First Boeing 787 Dreamliner to be delivered to All Nippon Airways (ANA) today

Finmeccanica announces that the first Boeing 787 Dreamliner will be delivered to All Nippon Airways (ANA) today at the company's facility in Seattle. The Japanese airline, which has ordered a total of 55 aircraft out of the 821 currently in Boeing's order backlog, will be the first in the world to operate this innovative jet, to which Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica company, has made a major contribution ever since the launch of the programme in 2003.

Alenia Aeronautica's participation in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner programme, which is currently the most advanced initiative in the civil aviation field, comprises the central and central-rear fuselage sections and the horizontal stabiliser. Specifically, Alenia Aeronautica, as one of Boeing's main partners, has designed, developed and manufactured not only all the structural components of the aircraft under its responsibility, but has also implemented the infrastructure and defined the processes necessary for their production, thereby taking its own expertise in the field of composite materials to the most advanced levels of technology.

In Puglia, in the Alenia Aeronautica centre of excellence in Monteiasi-Grottaglie (Taranto), entire primary structures for the Boeing 787 fuselage are manufactured from composite materials using an innovative production process and "one-piece barrel" technology, specifically the central-rear fuselage section no. 46 (between 10 and more than 15 metres length in the three versions) and section no. 44 (8.5 metres in the basic version). Alenia Aeronautica also manufactures the horizontal stabiliser of the Boeing 787 in Puglia, at its Foggia site. The stabiliser is the largest monolithic composite structure ever produced for a commercial aircraft, and acts as a type of semi wing, with a span of around 20 m.

These Alenia Aeronautica's proprietary technologies and innovative production processes make the Italian company one of the most important players in the world for composite material production in the aeronautics sector.

Alenia Aeronautica's industrial activities for the 787 Dreamliner – a programme in which Finmeccanica has invested heavily – benefit from the integration of the competencies and activities of the company's various centres of excellence in Italy: the Pomigliano d’Arco site (Naples) for design, laboratory testing and the specialised production of certain primary structure components and the facilities in Monteiasi- Grottaglie (Taranto) and Foggia for the production of fuselage sections and the horizontal stabilisers respectively.